BJPA Blog - diversityhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm
A blog by the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagneren-usTue, 03 Mar 2015 20:34:42 -0500Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:10:00 -0500BlogCFChttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssbjpa.wagner@nyu.edubjpa.wagner@nyu.edubjpa.wagner@nyu.edunoLanguage, Culture, & Schoolhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/22/Language-Culture--School
<p>Two articles from the <a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?PublicationName=Journal%20of%20Jewish%20Communal%20Service&amp;VolumeIssue=Vol%2E86%2FNo%2E1%2F2">Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service</a> caught our attention recently, in light of our upcoming event this Monday (see flier below for details). The event will explore issues facing dual language public schools -- institutions which might be viewed by some as vehicles to preserve and transmit cultural identities, while others would seek to minimize or oppose this goal since public schools ought to serve society as a whole, rather than individual cultural sub-groups. (A viewpoint from the perspective of promoting multiculturalism might not view these two goals as being in tension.)</p>
<p>BJPA didn't have these articles in mind while planning the event, but they're worth excerpting in advance of it.</p>
<p><strong>Leon Wieseltier<span style="font-style: italic;">: </span></strong><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13799"><strong><em>Language, Identity, and the Scandal of American Jewry</em></strong></a><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; outline-width: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; font-size: 14px; font-family: Calibri,arial,verdana,helvetica,sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br />
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<blockquote>
<p>...</p>
<p>The American Jewish community is the fi rst great community in the history of our people that believes that it can receive, develop, and perpetuate the Jewish tradition <em>not</em> in a Jewish language. By an overwhelming majority, American Jews cannot read or speak or write Hebrew or Yiddish. This is genuinely shocking. American Jewry is quite literally unlettered. The assumption of American Jewry that it can do without a Jewish language is an arrogance without precedent in Jewish history. And this illiteracy, I suggest, will leave American Judaism and American Jewishness forever crippled and scandalously thin... Without Hebrew, the Jewish tradition will not disappear entirely in America, but most of it will certainly disappear...</p>
<p>In America, the first evidence of Jewish illiteracy occurs as early as 1761 and 1766, when Isaac Pinto published his translations of the liturgy into English. He was acting out of a sense of crisis, out of his feeling that Hebrew, as he put it, needed to &ldquo;be reestablished in Israel.&rdquo; Of the American Jewish community of his time, Pinto recorded that Hebrew was &ldquo;imperfectly understood by many; by some, not at all.&rdquo; In 1784, Haym Solomon found it necessary to address an inquiry in the matter of a certain inheritance to Rabbi David Tevele Schiff of the Great Synagogue in London, but the renowned Jewish leader could not write the Hebrew epistle himself, and so he enlisted the help of a local Jew from Prague. In 1818, at the consecration in New York of a building for the Shearith Israel synagogue, Mordecai Emanuel Noah observed that &ldquo;with the loss of the Hebrew language may be added the downfall of the house of Israel.&rdquo;...</p>
<p>Of course, I do not mean to deny the validity or the utility of translation, which was also a primary activity of Jewish intellectuals throughout the centuries... Translation has always represented an admirable realism about the actual cultural situation of the Jews in exile. Whatever the linguistic delinquencies of the Jews, their books must not remain completely closed to them. Better partial access than no access at all, obviously.</p>
<p>Moreover, we are American Jews; that is to say, we believe in the reality of freedom, and we are prepared to pay its price... The requirement that a Jew know a Jewish language is not a requirement that a Jew know only a Jewish language, and it is certainly not a requirement that a Jew express only one belief in only one means of expression... My question to the Jewish writer in America is not, what language can you write? My question is, what language can you read?...</p>
<p>Illiteracy is nothing less than a variety of blindness, and the vast majority of American Jews are blind. The extent of this blindness&mdash;and it is a willed blindness, a blindness that can be corrected&mdash;can be illustrated anecdotally. Here is a tale. Some years ago, the exiled president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was traveling around the United States in the hope of enlisting sympathy for his cause, and he went to New York for a meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. Now, in his youth Aristide had studied at a seminary in Jerusalem, and he happens to be fluent in Hebrew. It seemed entirely natural and right, in his view, to address the assembled representatives of the Jewish community in what he took to be their own tongue, or at least one of their tongues. And so he began to speak to our leaders in Hebrew. After a few minutes, the <em>negidim</em> rather sheepishly asked their distinguished non-Jewish guest if he could make his remarks in English, because they could not understand what he was saying...</p>
<p>All this is not justifiable. It represents a breathtaking communitywide irresponsibility. Between every generation, not only in circumstances of war but also in circumstances of peace, much is always lost. Only a small fraction of the works of the human spirit ever survives the war against time, but the quantity of the Jewish tradition that is slipping through our fingers in America is unprecedented in our history. And it is the illiteracy of American Jewry that makes it complicit in this oblivion.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13799">More details...</a><br />
</em></p>
<p><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=13799"><em>Download directly...</em></a></p>
<p><strong>Adam R. Gaynor:<em> <a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13788">Beyond the Melting Pot: Finding a Voice for Jewish Identity in Multicultural American Schools</a></em></strong></p>
<blockquote>
<p>For the better part of a century, integration has characterized the Jewish experience in America, but modern Jewish education struggles to reverse that trend by separating Jewish youth from their non-Jewish peers and herding them into the walls of our communal institutions. This model ignores a particularly acute demographic reality: most American Jews no longer affiliate with the communal institutions in which Jewish learning takes place. Consequently, this article posits that the key to providing high-quality Jewish education with the majority of Jewish students, who do not access Jewish learning or intensive Jewish experiences, is to reach them in the multicultural environments in which they live and learn daily. More specifically, I argue that we need to create, support, and replicate programs that are integrated elements of school communities, the places in which Jewish kids and young adults spend the majority of their time...</p>
<p>...It is worthwhile to note that although Jews are well represented and largely successful in universities and schools, Jewish content is generally absent. Often, when Jewish content is integrated into curricula, Jews and Jewish culture are portrayed as obsolete. Jewish content most often appears in courses about Bible, representing ancient Jewish history, or about the Holocaust, representing Jewish victimization. For Jewish and non-Jewish students alike, the implicit message conveyed through these choices (in the absence of other content) is that Jewish culture lacks contemporary relevance. When prominent Jews, such as Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, and Bella Abzug, are studied, the fact of their <em>Jewishness</em> and its impact on their work remain unexplored. On occasion, Jews emerge in elective courses about the Middle East, but are often portrayed as a monolithic and imperialist group. The diversity of Jewish opinions about the Middle East and the complex modern history of Jewish identities and communities that have affected this topic remain unexamined...</p>
<p>Historically, the problem of representation in educational institutions and curricula is not unique to Jews. For traditionally marginalized and disempowered groups such as communities of color, women, gays and lesbians, and all combinations thereof, the problems described above have existed to a greater or lesser degree for centuries. However, for several decades now, other historically disempowered communities have increasingly seen themselves reflected in the curricular and extracurricular programming of public and private schools on the primary, secondary, and university levels; there is no good reason why Jewish students cannot see themselves reflected in these spaces as well...</p>
<p>Multicultural education has had a profound impact on the contemporary educational landscape, particularly following periods of intense student activism in the late 1960s and early 1990s. In concert with feminist theory, it has brought significant attention to the histories and literature of people of color and women through curricular enrichment and the founding of specialized, interdisciplinary departments at colleges; it has led to the diversification of faculty and student bodies; it has forced schools and colleges to reconsider discriminatory policies; and it has increased faculty professional development on cross-cultural teaching that can lead to improved achievement (Tatum, 2003). However, except for the recent growth of Jewish Studies courses and departments, Jewish content is still nearly absent from curricula, and Jewish culture is largely ignored by student services offices...</p>
<p>Ironically, it is the Jewish community&rsquo;s own resistance to multicultural education that has prevented our inclusion in educational curricula... Jewish immigrants in the early twentieth century were fierce proponents of public education; unlike Catholic immigrants who opted for parochial education in large numbers, Jews valued public schools as a route toward acculturation (Krasner, 2005). Jews have also been fierce defenders of the separation between church and state and have supported the exclusion of religion as a census category. Jews embraced the universalism of the Enlightenment, which was reinvented in the melting pot motif, as a ticket to achieve unprecedented success in America. For many Jews, multiculturalism theoretically threatened the universalism that facilitated this achievement...</p>
<p>The prevailing, isolationist model of Jewish education that pulls students out of their everyday lives and separates them from their peers has not inspired significant participation. Sometimes, separating and feeling grounded as a group are important, and we should honor those needs. However, if we are to inspire Jewish students to feel invested in their Jewishness, then Jewish learning has to imbue their everyday lives with meaning. The key to doing this is through high-quality Jewish education in the multicultural environments in which they live and learn daily. Our aim should be to create, support, and replicate programs that are integrated elements of students&rsquo; schools, the communities in which they spend most of their time. Multicultural education is the practical framework for this approach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13788">More details...</a><br />
</em></p>
<p><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=13788"><em>Download directly...</em></a></p>
<p><strong>And don't miss the event this Monday:</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/events" target="_blank"><img align="middle" width="500" border="0" height="647" alt="flier" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/duallangfinal.png" /></a></p>
democracycontinuityeventsdiscoursecommunal responsibilitydiversityassimilationidentitycultureeducationyiddishlanguagehebrewpeoplehoodacculturationThu, 22 Mar 2012 09:10:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/22/Language-Culture--SchoolFrom the J-Vault: "in his own language"http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/15/JVault-in-his-own-language
<p><img align="middle" border="0" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/jvault_web_logo.JPG" alt="J-Vault logo" /></p>
<p>&quot;For the success of this work of Americanizing and educating the immigrant,&quot; writes Rabbi Henry Cohen, &quot;one thing is essential. You must go to him first in a friendly and democratic way in his own language.&quot;</p>
<p>As you may have seen, our <a href="http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs070/1102433540041/archive/1109491527423.html">March newsletter</a> featured a <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13757">Reader's Guide to Jewish Languages</a>, in connection with an <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/bjpa-03-26-2012">upcoming event on Dual Language Public Schools</a>. (March 26th, from 3 to 5. <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/">Click here</a> to RSVP.) At the event, educators and scholars will discuss issues of language and education, especially as they relate to issues of culture and identity in the United States. This installment of the J-Vault explores related concepts.</p>
<p><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=1517"><img align="right" width="400" height="280" border="0" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/jvimmigrant.png" alt="IMAGE DESC" /></a></p>
<p><strong>This week, from the J-Vault: <a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=1517"><em>The Immigrant Publication Society</em></a></strong> (1915)</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>You ask me to give you an account of our new society. I am very glad to do so, particularly at this time, when the need of making all our immigrants a vital part of the nation is greater than ever before...</em></p>
<p><em>For the success of this work of Americanizing and educating the immigrant, one thing is essential. You must go to him first in a friendly and democratic way in his own language. This is the only way to reach him. Every stress must of course be laid upon the necessity of his learning English, and simple and practical books on learning it must be promptly offered him. But to the cleverest, the simplest English book is at first impossible. Not everyone has the gift of languages. Some few never learn any English at all, but, fortunately, experience gives abundant proof that the immigrant can absorb the spirit of the new country through his own language...</em></p>
</blockquote><blockquote>
<p><em>The first step in so essentially a patriotic American work was the preparation, curiously enough at the suggestion of the Royal Italian Immigration Commission, of an Immigrant's Guide, telling the newcomer the things which he needs to know, and which he knows he needs... The success of this &quot;Little Green Book,&quot; as it was at once called, was immediate. With the cordial help of many interested Jewish societies, it was soon carefully adapted in every detail for the use of the English - speaking immigrants.</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Describing the success of the book, and bolstering his case for the need of a new organization dedicated to publishing non-English books, Rabbi Cohen noted that the <a href="http://www.nypl.org/">New York Public Library</a> was in the midst of a sharp rise in demand for Yiddish books.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em>But ordinarily the librarian in opening a department in a foreign language is forced to depend upon a chance adviser, with consequences that are sometimes amusing, sometimes really disastrous. The problem presents serious difficulties. How can the librarian be sure of giving the immigrant the best books and papers in his own language, not only for his pleasure, but very practically to help him, explaining America and its opportunities, putting before him the means of learning English, of becoming an American citizen, and of satisfying many of the most important necessities of his new life? How can the librarian be sure that she is not innocently placing on the shelves books that are atheistic, anarchistic, propagandizing, indecent or simply &quot;trash?&quot; What hooks should she buy first? What size are they? What do they cost? How shall the foreigner be taught the privileges and rules of the library?...</em></p>
<p><em>How remarkable a thing it is that the first popular Yiddish bibliography published in America should be printed at the insistence of American librarians&mdash;one of a series that Mr. Anderson, with the practical experience of New York, says, are: &quot;Exactly what we need to help us make the immigrant understand America and its institutions.&quot;</em></p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=1517">Click for more information...</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=1517">Download the publication...</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
<p><a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/events/bjpa-03-26-2012"><em><strong>***Join us on March 26***</strong></em></a></p>
<p><img align="middle" border="0" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/lock.JPG" style="width: 123px; height: 108px;" alt="J-Vault logo" /></p>
languageJ-VaulteventsacculturationhistorydiversitypublicationsimmigrationcultureThu, 15 Mar 2012 11:27:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/15/JVault-in-his-own-languageForging a Unity Through Diversityhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/14/Forging-a-Unity-Through-Diversity
<p>For a new installment of our&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours">&quot;Office Hours&quot; video series</a>, Prof.&nbsp;<a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/foldy">Erica Foldy</a>&nbsp;of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.wagner.nyu.edu/">NYU Wagner</a> suggests that there need not be any tension between unity and diversity. For more in this video series, see:&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" rel="nofollow" title="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours" target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bjpa.org%2Fblog%2Findex.cfm%2FOffice-Hours&amp;session_token=JtymDYu9Q48on-q37fHQgUDerAl8MTMzMTY3MTk5MEAxMzMxNTg1NTkw">http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours</a></p>
<p>Browse BJPA for Diversity:&nbsp;<a dir="ltr" rel="nofollow" title="http://bit.ly/xZJsNT" target="_blank" href="http://bit.ly/xZJsNT">http://bit.ly/xZJsNT</a></p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/z33f-c-Opuk" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p><em>Note: if you cannot see this embedded video, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z33f-c-Opuk">click here.</a></em></p>
ethicsOffice HoursdiscoursediversitypluralismethnicityvideodialoguevaluescultureWed, 14 Mar 2012 09:30:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/14/Forging-a-Unity-Through-DiversityMaking Diversity Workhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/12/Making-Diversity-Work
<p>For a new installment of our <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours">&quot;Office Hours&quot; video series</a>, Prof. <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/foldy">Erica Foldy</a> of <a href="http://www.wagner.nyu.edu">NYU Wagner</a> describes her research on color-blind and color-cognizant approaches to diversity in the workplace.</p>
<p>For more in this video series, see: <a data-redirect-href-updated="true" href="http://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bjpa.org%2Fblog%2Findex.cfm%2FOffice-Hours&amp;session_token=JtymDYu9Q48on-q37fHQgUDerAl8MTMzMTY3MTk5MEAxMzMxNTg1NTkw" target="_blank" title="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours" rel="nofollow" dir="ltr">http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours</a></p>
<p>Browse BJPA for:</p>
<ul>
<li>Race -- <a href="http://bit.ly/z65NoE" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/z65NoE" rel="nofollow" dir="ltr">http://bit.ly/z65NoE</a></li>
<li>Ethnicity: <a href="http://bit.ly/y775XL" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/y775XL" rel="nofollow" dir="ltr">http://bit.ly/y775XL</a></li>
<li>Diversity: <a href="http://bit.ly/xZJsNT" target="_blank" title="http://bit.ly/xZJsNT" rel="nofollow" dir="ltr" class="yt-uix-redirect-link">http://bit.ly/xZJsNT</a></li>
</ul>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ipxEmRFhaME"></iframe></p>
<p><em>Note: if you cannot see this embedded video, </em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipxEmRFhaME"><em>click here.</em></a></p>
workplacedemocracyOffice Hoursmanagement and administrationdiscoursediversityracepluralismethnicitysocial issuesvaluescultureMon, 12 Mar 2012 17:05:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/3/12/Making-Diversity-Work"But their God runs Mississippi..."http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/22/But-their-God-runs-Mississippi
<p>&quot;Jews have been and remain marginal to the South,&quot; writes Deborah Dash Moore:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Their marginality is intrinsic to their existence as southern Jews. African Americans have been and remain central to the South. It is impossible to imagine southern culture, politics, religion, economy, or in short, any aspect of southern life, without African Americans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Moore's comparison of African American and Jewish American history is presented in her chapter, <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2473">&quot;Separate Paths: Blacks and Jews in the Twentieth-Century South,&quot;</a> from the book Struggles in the Promised Land: Toward a History of Black-Jewish Relations in the United States. Continuing our <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Black-History-Month">Black History Month series</a>, some excerpts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The history of Jews and Blacks in the South reveals enormous contrasts and few similarities. Differences include demographic and settlement patterns, occupational distribution, forms of culture, religion, and community life, even politics and the prejudice and discrimination endured by each group. Visible Jewish presence in the South is considered so atypical that when large numbers of Jews (that is, over 100,000) actually did settle in a southern city, as they did In Miami and Miami Beach after World War II, the entire area of South Florida was soon dismissed as no longer southern and jokingly referred to as a suburb of New York City... In the popular mind as well as in reality, the South would not be the South without Black Americans. Jews, by contrast, offer an interesting footnote to understanding the region, an opportunity to examine the possibilities and cost of religious and ethnic diversity in a society sharply divided along color lines...</p>
<p>Irrespective of where they settled (except, of course, for Miami), Jews usually worked in middleman minority occupations not considered typically southern: as peddlers, shopkeepers, merchants, manufacturers, and occasionally professionals (doctors, dentists, druggists). Main street was their domain. Initially Jews lived behind or above their stores; as they prospered they moved to white residential sections of town...</p>
<p>By contrast, African Americans worked at a wide range of occupations from sharecropper and farmer, to day laborer and industrial worker, to a handful of middle and upper class positions, including storekeepers, teachers, entrepreneurs, and professionals serving a segregated society... Unlike Jews, many of whom were self-employed, Blacks largely worked for others, usually whites, restricted by custom and prejudice to the least desirable jobs in each sector of the economy...</p>
<p>Probably the single most important communal institution was the Black church. Virtually all African Americans, seeking individual salvation and collective spirituality, joined a church, which was usually either Baptist or Methodist. The church not only offered Sunday services and schooling, but it also sponsored social welfare, and civic and cultural activities... Synagogues assumed far less centrality in the Jewish community, though far greater percentages of Jews joined them in the South than in the North...</p>
<p>Usually accepted as white, and not summarily excluded from participation in civic affairs as were African Americans, Jews tried to maintain communal institutions focused upon internal Jewish needs, such as community centers, B'nai B'rith lodges, social welfare organizations, as well as women's clubs and Zionist groups, while supporting white community endeavors not connected wirh the church, such as cultural activities, better business and chamber of commerce groups, and philanthropic endeavors. Their success in this dual enterprise depended upon politics; during the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan after its reestablishment in 1915 in Georgia, Jews generally found themselves unwelcome in both political and civic endeavors. This chilly environment warmed substantially during World War II, and southern Jews faced the dawning of the postwar civil rights era feeling integrated into the white community. Observers in the 1960s discovered even among relatively small Jewish populations that two communities often coexisted, divided sharply by their &quot;degree of Southernness.&quot;... Opposition to Zionism, and by extension Jewish nationalism and ethnicity, coincided with a high degree of &quot;Southernness.&quot; Irrespective of ideology, however, southern Jews uncovered no antisemitism among their neighbors, although many feared that it might be &quot;stirred up&quot; by political change.&quot; Outsiders visiting their fellow Jews rarely understood such sentiments... Coming down to Mississippi to help with legal defense of those involved in the voter registration drive, Marvin Braiterman, a lawyer, decided to attend services at a local synagogue to escape the tensions of the week. &quot;We know right from wrong, and the difference between our God and the segregationist God they talk about down here,&quot; his Jewish hosts told him. &quot;But their God runs Mississippi, not ours. We have to work quietly, secretly. We have to play ball. Anti-Semitism is always right around the corner.&quot;...</p>
<p>World War II changed southern Jewish attitudes toward politics, but not enough to bring them into convergence with African Americans' increasing demands for equal civil rights and for an end to desegregation. Jews migrating to the South after the war carried their politics in their suitcases, but since 80 percent of these northern newcomers went down to Miami, they exerted little influence on the emerging civil rights movement. A handful of young rabbis joined forces with Christian clergy across the color line, but most feared to speak out lest they lose their positions...</p>
<p>The shift from protest to politics--especially the voter registration drives organized by SNCC in 1964 that drew large numbers of northern Jewish students to the South-exacerbated southern Jewish discomfort. The rabbi of Meridian, Mississippi, urged Michael Schwerner to leave, fearing that white anger at Schwerner might turn against local Jews.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much more fascinating history follows, including the bitter conflict between the Black and Jewish communities surrounding the Leo Frank case.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2473"><em><strong>Read more...</strong></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=2473"><em><strong>Download directly...</strong></em></a></p>
<p><em>To read more publications at intersections of Black and Jewish history, see this special&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/viewPublishedBookshelf.cfm?id=52759DE4-2590-26BF-AE830B622A7753ED"><strong><em>Bookshelf for Black History Month</em></strong></a><strong><em>.</em></strong></p>
<p><em>(Remember, if you're a&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Login/register.cfm"><em>registered</em></a><em>&nbsp;user [it's free], you can&nbsp;</em><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/_Admin/Bookshelf/adminBookshelf.cfm"><em>create bookshelves</em></a><em>&nbsp;like this one to save sets of BJPA documents for later. Keep them private, or publish them to the web to share with colleagues. Sort manually, or automatically by date or title. View or print the lists, or export to MS Word for easy bibliographies.)</em></p>
Black-Jewish relationspoliticsdiscoursediversityculturecommunity relationsBlack History Monthhistoryracismracecommunity buildingcivil rightsantisemitismdialogueWed, 22 Feb 2012 11:30:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/22/But-their-God-runs-MississippiEnvisioning Jewish Diversityhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/14/Envisioning-Jewish-Diversity
<p><img align="middle" border="0" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/mccoy.JPG" alt="Yavilah McCoy" /></p>
<blockquote>
<p>My great-grandmother, who is still alive, was the daughter of an enslaved African. My other great-grandmother, who took the name &ldquo;Naomi,&rdquo; was the first in my maternal family line to investigate the spiritual possibilities of Judaism and take steps toward Jewish practice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yavilah_McCoy">Yavilah McCoy</a> discussed Jewish diversity and her experience as a Jew of color <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=6465">for Sh'ma in 2003:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>My parents converted to Orthodox Judaism, and raised me and my five siblings as Orthodox Jews. My Jewish education has included a range of perspectives: Hasidic elementary school and Yeshivah University Modern-Orthodox high school, The State University of New York at Albany, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem...</p>
<p>...As I reflect on my experiences as a Jewish woman of color, I notice immediately that my consciousness of Jewish identity developed in two stages. Initially my education and community environment presented me with a picture of Judaism that was unidimensional in terms of geography, gender, religious status, race, and social class. But eventually I began to acknowledge the need for a more complex and complete picture of Judaism. I began to wrestle with the concept of &ldquo;otherness&rdquo; &mdash; &ldquo;us&rdquo; and &ldquo;them&rdquo; &mdash; in the Jewish community...</p>
<p>...What does Jewish look like? Is Jewish only a physical appearance with origins in Poland, Germany, and Russia? Or do you also look Jewish if you are from the Middle East and North Africa, India, Yemen, Ethiopia, Iraq, or Iran? By nature of our origins, we are the descendants of a brown-skinned Semitic tribe that migrated from the Middle East and North Africa. Yet, poignantly, an African- American colleague recently asked me why, if Jews are so multicultural, he has only seen in books, in the media, in leadership, and everywhere else, white people?</p>
<p>My husband and I are Orthodox African- American Jews raising three beautiful Jews of color. I do the work of Jewish multiculturalism today, so that they will see the day when &ldquo;Jewish&rdquo; will mean a harmonious representation of the diversity of our world. In the blurred space between standard and strange lies a hospitable new reality for all Jews called &ldquo;home.&rdquo;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=6465"><em><strong>Read more...</strong></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=6465"><em><strong>Download directly...</strong></em></a></p>
<p>To read more publications at intersections of Black and Jewish history, see this special&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/viewPublishedBookshelf.cfm?id=52759DE4-2590-26BF-AE830B622A7753ED"><strong>Bookshelf for Black History Month</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>(Remember, if you're a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Login/register.cfm">registered</a>&nbsp;user [it's free], you can&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/_Admin/Bookshelf/adminBookshelf.cfm">create bookshelves</a>&nbsp;like this one to save sets of BJPA documents for later. Keep them private, or publish them to the web to share with colleagues. Sort manually, or automatically by date or title. View or print the lists, or export to MS Word for easy bibliographies.)</p>
Black-Jewish relationsBlack History MonthdiversityidentityTue, 14 Feb 2012 09:15:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/14/Envisioning-Jewish-DiversityJews & Black American Culturehttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/10/Jews--Black-American-Culture
<blockquote>
<p>Jews in the United States today are creating a Jewish culture that draws heavily on African American and, in the case of reggae, Afro-Caribbean styles of expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So writes Eric Goldstein in the <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?PublicationName=AJS%20Perspectives%3A%20The%20Magazine%20of%20the%20Association%20for%20Jewish%20Studies&amp;VolumeIssue=Fall%202007">Fall 2007</a> issue of <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?PublicationName=AJS%20Perspectives%3A%20The%20Magazine%20of%20the%20Association%20for%20Jewish%20Studies">AJS Perspectives.</a> Continuing our <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Black-History-Month">Black History Month series</a>, let us explore <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2612"><strong>Fashioning Jewishness in a Black and White World:</strong></a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Although this trend is being pursued by many types of Jews, it owes much of its current vogue to the lively subculture known as the &ldquo;Jewish hipster&rdquo; movement and its unofficial organ, <em>Heeb</em> magazine. Since its debut in 2002, Heeb has often linked Jews with blacks as part of its overall campaign to demonstrate that Jewishness can be &ldquo;cool,&rdquo; a point often made with <em>Heeb</em>&rsquo;s special brand of over-the-top comedy. The magazine&rsquo;s very first cover, for example, featured black hands placing a round piece of shmurah matzoh on a turntable, a theme echoed in a long-running satirical advertisement in which an African American man proclaims a piece of Streit&rsquo;s matzoh to be &ldquo;a big ass cracker!&rdquo;...</p>
<p>...The trend so apparent in <em>Heeb</em> soon appeared in other quarters as well. In 2003, writer-director Jonathan Kesselman presented the first &ldquo;Jewxploitation film,&rdquo; the <em>Hebrew Hammer</em>, which used similar comic hyperbole to explicitly link Jews and African Americans. Drawing on the popular blaxploitation genre of the 1970s, the film followed the adventures of a tough Jewish action hero who speaks with &ldquo;a mix of Black Panther argot and Yiddish&rdquo;<br />
and &ldquo;struts through the &lsquo;chood&rsquo; instilling Jewish pride in its youth.&rdquo; The music industry, as suggested above, has become perhaps the most active arena in which young Jews link themselves with black culture. The most famous example is Matisyahu (n&eacute; Matthew Paul Miller), the Chabad/Lubavitch devotee who was named top reggae artist of 2006 by <em>Billboard</em> magazine...</p>
<p>...In all of these cases, it is apparent that the use of black images and style allow young Jews to link themselves to what they perceive as the assertiveness and independence of African Americans. Despite contemporary society&rsquo;s claim to be a &ldquo;multicultural&rdquo; one, the black-white divide is still a powerful enough construct to make African Americans the most powerful symbol of difference in American society. As a result, they are an attractive touchstone for Jews who have become frustrated with the constraints placed on them by their membership in the white mainstream...</p>
<p>...In the 1920s and 1930s, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker and other Jewish performers were well known for their blackface routines, which lampooned blacks but also contained elements of tribute and identification... As memoirs of the interwar years record, Jewish youth frequently listened to &ldquo;race records&rdquo; and invited black musicians to perform at their dances. Some made excursions to Harlem and other black neighborhoods in the urban north to seek out nightclubs and dance halls and sometimes romantic liaisons...</p>
<p>...What, then, separates the contemporary Jewish appropriation of black culture from these earlier examples? First and foremost, prewar Jews who experimented with black culture did so under a very different set of social circumstances. Not yet fully vested as a part of the white mainstream, Jews before 1945 were often described, and described themselves, as members of a distinct &ldquo;race.&rdquo; Although this did not necessarily mean that they were seen as nonwhite, it did mean that they occupied an uncertain place in America&rsquo;s racial constellation...</p>
<p>...In this context, Jews who bristled under the pressures of acculturation often found black culture to be a welcome escape valve...</p>
<p>...After 1965, however, two major shifts began to occur in American Jewish identity. First, a growing acceptance of difference in American culture lessened the pressure on Jews to downplay their distinctiveness. Second, the emergence of Black Power movements and civil rights legislation that identified minority status with peoples of color made many Jews uneasy with how they were now defined as part of the white power structure, a designation that cut against their own &ldquo;outsider&rdquo; consciousness. Ironically, having begun to achieve the privileged status they had long sought, they now felt troubled by the threatened loss of their group distinctiveness...</p>
<p>...The fact that Jewish integration has continued to reach unprecedented levels in recent years helps explain the intensifying appeal of African American culture, which gives contemporary Jews a powerful tool for asserting their difference. Unlike the flirtations of Jews with black culture in the 1920s and 1930s, today&rsquo;s Jewish interest in hip-hop, reggae, African American-Jewish celebrities and black cultural style is part of a broader assertion of Jewish particularity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2612"><em><strong>Read more...</strong></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=2612"><em><strong>Download directly...</strong></em></a></p>
<p>To read more publications at intersections of Black and Jewish history, see this special&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/viewPublishedBookshelf.cfm?id=52759DE4-2590-26BF-AE830B622A7753ED"><strong>Bookshelf for Black History Month</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>(Remember, if you're a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Login/register.cfm">registered</a>&nbsp;user [it's free], you can&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/_Admin/Bookshelf/adminBookshelf.cfm">create bookshelves</a>&nbsp;like this one to save sets of BJPA documents for later. Keep them private, or publish them to the web to share with colleagues. Sort manually, or automatically by date or title. View or print the lists, or export to MS Word for easy bibliographies.)</p>
Black-Jewish relationsBlack History MonthdiversityraceidentitycultureFri, 10 Feb 2012 08:30:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/10/Jews--Black-American-CultureJ-Vault for Black History Monthhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/7/JVault-for-Black-History-Month
<p><img align="middle" border="0" alt="J-Vault logo" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/jvault_web_logo.JPG" /></p>
<p>In honor of Black History Month, throughout February this blog will highlight selections at intersections of Black and Jewish history. Some such publications will make us proud; others -- like this one -- will certainly not. The Jewish community is (rightly) proud of its record in the struggle for recognition of the civil rights of African-Americans, but it is also important to remember that this record is not spotless. The Jewish community too -- and even the profession of Jewish communal service -- was capable of including professionals who might make reference to racist &quot;science&quot; (see the first paragraph quoted below), or refer to African culture with the phrase &quot;<em>tainted</em> with African history&quot; (further below; emphasis added).</p>
<p><strong>This week, from the J-Vault: </strong><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=12330"><em><strong>Negro &quot;Jews&quot; : A Social Study </strong></em></a>(1933)</p>
<p>The quotation marks in the title speak volumes by themselves about the author's hostility toward his subjects. Excerpts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Negro Jews as an organization or social unit are non-existent elsewhere than in America. There is an Indian-Negro sect in the West Indies that historically taboos pork and may thus claim a relationship in consideration of its present rite, and its former questionable ancestry. The only dark skinned foreign group that is Jewish in ancestry and practice is the Abyssinian Jew or Falasha, and scientific investigation places this rather pure strain in the white race. Therefore, the Falasha Jew is not included in this study. Our specific problem as social workers is the so-called &quot;Jewish&quot; Negro in New York City...</p>
<p>...Before attempting to analyze the sociological import of these groups of associations of &quot;Jewish&quot; Negroes, it is essential that we be familiar with their history and background, and have a knowledge of social conditions in New York City and in the West Indies from which a large portion of these adherents derive. Exact names and titles have been disguised, without affecting the underlying facts...</p>
<p>...In 1900, Abraham, a twenty-year-old fish peddler of Norfolk, Virginia, and to some extent a religious mystic, convinced himself, aided by the fact of similarity of occupation, that he was the second Jesus Christ. He gathered about him a group of people, and conducted services as the &quot;Church of Eternity.&quot; For several years, as father of the new sect, he conducted business at this stand, until 1908 when he was evicted for being a nuisance...</p>
<p>...His method of raising money was to select a small tradesman in the neighborhood and direct group members to deal there. Later Abraham would visit the merchant and convince him that as his customers were mostly members of the group he should join. Of course, as a member, the new constituent gave up his possessions to the church... The women who joined had to forswear their marital ties. Husbands and wives became &quot;brothers and sisters&quot; in their mutual relations. They gave one another up to the group; the women were supposed to be held in common, but actually they were reserved to the priests, and in time largely to. one priest, Abraham. This man had a great number of illegitimate children within the group; in the latter period many were children whom he had by his own children. Pregnant women were kept on a &quot;baby farm&quot; which the group owned in Absecon, New Jersey...</p>
<p>...The second group of importance is known as the Church of the Promised Land and Talmud Torah. It was the parent organization of the Sons of Israel. Rabbi Joseph, formerly mentioned in connection with Rabbi Jacob, was the godfather of this institution in Harlem, with a branch in Brooklyn. Rabbi Joseph of Florida, and a &quot;voodoo&quot; man from a nationalistic Negro association, directed the Talmud Torah, which was organized in connection with this church. The group was incorporated July 1921. The group split up in 1922 and Rabbi Jacob organized the Sons of Israel.</p>
<p>Rabbi Jacob's ideas were gathered from the Abraham group, and the Garvey movement from which he had been ousted. He built up a membership of several hundred. This group was the only authentic one of all the &quot;Jewish&quot; Negro groups, in that services were conducted with Jewish aspects, tinged, however, with Mahommedanism. Its entire life was over six years. Rabbi Jacob employed several white Jews to instruct his congregation in Jewish ways, and arranged for the children to be instructed at the Institutional Synagogue Talmud Torah, which is under the auspices of persons prominent in Orthodox Jewish circles...</p>
<p>...The oldest organization, or parent group, is known as the &quot;Church of Eternity.&quot; Its membership is composed of a group of Negroes claiming to be Jews. It is located in Harlem in New York City. The majority of the membership is of West Indian derivation... History unfolds the parable in the West Indies during the Sixteenth Century when some eight hundred Jews are reported to have been exiled from England and to have intermarried with the native and Negro populations. Although Christianity was the prevailing enforced religion, Judaism is supposed to have been/ practiced privately...</p>
<p>...Being left to themselves in the West Indies, the Negroes develop certain stories which are all tainted with African history and preceded by African background. And, when added to this is the story of the Bible, of the Jews being delivered by both the Egyptian and Babylonish captivities, these black natives imagine all sorts of fantastic plans for the redemption of Africa. They identify themselves with the Ancient Jews; they think of themselves as the children of Israel crossing the Red Sea...</p>
<p>...The only reason these groups called themselves Jews rather than something non-Jewish seems to be based on the fact that they, Abraham and Gabriel, had run the entire gamut of Christian beliefs. To do something new, and thus attractive, they could become only either Jews or Mohammedans, as only these groups would not reject them. Abraham and Gabriel could not adopt Mohammedanism because they knew nothing about it and had no way of learning because of their ignorance of Arabic. Jews always recognize Jews as fellows in persecution. Gad (the Arabian) knew Hebrew and Yiddish, and all the group knew the Bible; so it was easy for them to take over the Jewish title. They used to have letterheads with inscriptions in Yiddish and Hebrew, concerning their alleged orphan asylum, old folks home, school, etc. They were thus in a position to prey on the Jews in New York. The movement was almost purely mercenary and lascivious, although some of the leaders were sincere in their misguided beliefs.</p>
<p>Of the entire Negro population of the world which is estimated at 200,000,000, over 224,670 live in New York City within an - area of two square miles. Judaism is professed by four small groups in New York City fast disintegrating because of intrinsic and extrinsic reasons. There is no anthropological verity in their claims. Manifestly engendered by the African desire for free emotional expression and the personal ambition of local religious leaders rather than racial self-assertion, this movement gathered momentum under the Garvey impulse. But being founded in ignorance and self-aggrandizement it has lost power and personnel with the spread of Negro education and Negro internationalism. Therefore, upon analysis, except for its exploitation aspect, the problem resolves itself into a Negro one and, therefore, outside of the realm of Jewish social service&mdash; except from the broader humanitarian and internationalistic viewpoint.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=12330">Read more...</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
<p><em><strong><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=12330">Download directly...</a><br />
</strong></em></p>
<p><img align="middle" border="0" alt="J-Vault logo" style="width: 123px; height: 108px;" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/lock.JPG" /></p>
<p>To read more publications at intersections of Black and Jewish history, see this special <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/viewPublishedBookshelf.cfm?id=52759DE4-2590-26BF-AE830B622A7753ED"><strong>Bookshelf for Black History Month</strong></a><strong>.</strong></p>
<p>(Remember, if you're a <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Login/register.cfm">registered</a> user [it's free], you can <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/_Admin/Bookshelf/adminBookshelf.cfm">create bookshelves</a> like this one to save sets of BJPA documents for later. Keep them private, or publish them to the web to share with colleagues. Sort manually, or automatically by date or title. View or print the lists, or export to MS Word for easy bibliographies.)</p>
Black-Jewish relationsJ-VaultBlack History Monthpeoplehoodracismhistorydemographicsdiversityraceidentityjewish identificationcultureTue, 07 Feb 2012 08:45:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/2/7/JVault-for-Black-History-MonthLatin American Jewshttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/1/27/Latin-American-Jews
<p><img border="0" align="middle" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/jvault_web_logo.JPG" alt="J-Vault logo" /></p>
<p>Latino issues have been prominent in media coverage of the upcoming Florida primary election. This week, from the J-Vault, and as part of our continuing background coverage of that primary: <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5542"><em><strong>The Jews of Latin America </strong></em></a>(1918)</p>
<p>In this section of the 1918 American Jewish Yearbook, Harry O. Sandberg (a trade expert from the Pan American Union)&nbsp;outlines the general situation of Jews in Latin America. He discusses social and economic position, population estimates for cities and countries, ethnicity (Sephardic vs. Ashkenazic), national origin prior to immigration to Latin America, common professional occupations, cultural and religious institutions, and relations with the gentile residents.</p>
<p>Nations covered include the following, many of which (of course) we would now see as being inappropriately lumped in with Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica; Bermuda; the Bahamas; Barbados and Trinidad; Guadalupe and Martinique; Curacao; Surinam (Dutch Guiana); Puerto Rico; Virgin Islands; the Philippines; and the Hawaiian islands, which were not yet a state of the US.</p>
<p>The full report is 71 pages, a detailed look at Latin American Jewry nearly a century ago.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5542"><em><strong>Read more...<br />
</strong></em></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=5542"><em><strong>Download directly...</strong></em></a></p>
<p><img border="0" align="middle" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/lock.JPG" style="width: 123px; height: 108px;" alt="J-Vault logo" /></p>
<p>______________________________________________________________</p>
<h2><em><strong>ADDENDUM</strong></em></h2>
<p><strong>Related charts from Ira M. Sheskin's </strong><a href="../../../Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=13566"><strong>The Jewish Demography of Florida.</strong></a></p>
<p><img border="0" align="middle" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/hispJadultsFL.png" alt="Hispanic Jews in FL" /></p>
<p><img border="0" align="middle" alt="Countries of origin" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/hispJadultsFLcountries.png" /></p>
J-Vaulthistorydemographicsdiversityhispanic identityFri, 27 Jan 2012 12:56:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2012/1/27/Latin-American-JewsHappy Thanksgivinghttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/11/23/Happy-Thanksgiving
<p>A pair of Thanksgiving-related publications from <a href="http://www.shma.com">Sh'ma</a>:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=10610"><em><strong>Thanksgiving in Two-Plus Civilizations</strong>.</em></a> Stephen L. Tobias and his mixed family and friends celebrate American Thanksgiving in Morocco:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The acquisition of a kosher turkey was a journey in itself in the company of our Casablanca kosher butcher who took our order weeks before the occasion. He put the word out to his various suppliers for a <em>dindon,</em> or as it is called in Moroccan Arabic, a <em>bibi</em>. He oversaw the turkey's ritual slaughter and purification, and was amazed to learn of the custom of the distant American Jewish community which celebrated a religious holiday he himself had never heard of... A local winter squash made a serviceable mock pumpkin pie, and someone got us cranberry sauce from the nearby American military base - how often do you get to use the French word for cranberry? How often does anybody?</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=9766"><em><strong>Our November-December Dilemma.</strong></em></a> Philip Cohen reflects upon the transition from Thanksgiving to the Christmas season and, as an American Jew, feels whiplash<span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Calibri, arial, verdana, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 14px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Late autumn and early winter inevitably toss us Jews between the poles of a dialectic, yielding perhaps the strongest contrast found in our American social existence. On the one hand, there's Thanksgiving, with its message of America as a land based on fundamental principles of religious freedom... When we celebrate Thanksgiving, we are observing a moment of high American civil religion that Jews therefore share in common with all Americans. On the fourth Thursday of November we Jews are Americans together with all other Americans. With everyone else, we observe the uniqueness and greatness of our nation, against the backdrop of an essentially religious festival that was, after all, roughly patterned on <em>Sukkot</em>...</p>
<p>...Well and good. But no sooner are the turkey bones headed for trash then we are tossed to the opposite end of the dialectic. The green and red lights go up around the neighborhood, across the main streets and at the malls, and the variegated forces of the mass media remind us ad nauseam that we have a moral obligation to spend lots of money in the next month in order to mark the upcoming holiday season properly. Christmas music starts pouring over the airwaves sending a message of love and joy to all of us. The subliminal message we receive as non- Christians, I believe, is clear: This glitzy, faintly religious extravaganza of celebration, lights and fellowship is theirs and not ours... as much a part of things as we naturally and rightfully felt ourselves to be at Thanksgiving, that's how remote we feel from the center of America when Christmas rolls around.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Whether you feel near or remote from &quot;the center of America,&quot; have a Happy Thanksgiving!</p>
<p>Check out <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?Topic=Food&amp;TopicID=612&amp;SortBy=PublicationYear&amp;SortDir=DESC">our publications on the topic of Food</a>, too.</p>
diversityholidayscultureWed, 23 Nov 2011 12:38:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/11/23/Happy-ThanksgivingI'll Put Down My Institution if You Put Down Yourshttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/11/3/Ill-Put-Down-My-Institution-if-You-Put-Down-Yours
<p>Writing for <a href="http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/">eJPhil</a>, Robert Evans and Avrum Lapin point out that we have, in the United States, &quot;<a href="http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/too-many-jewish-institutions/">Too Many Jewish Institutions</a>&quot;.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">As a community, we have funneled untold billions of dollars and other human capital into constructing Jewish institutions &ndash; museums, hospitals, social service agencies, arts and cultural entities &ndash; that in too many cases would be more suitable as smaller components of larger facilities rather than as &ldquo;stand alone&rdquo; entities...</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline ! important; float: none;" class="Apple-style-span">...</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It is not our role to state which institutions hold the most value, reputation or prestige. That is the role of stakeholders, constituents and leaders. However, our logic tells us that if your city already has millions of dollars invested in a Jewish art museum, you probably don&rsquo;t need to build a new institution nearby that could feature exhibits and collections housed elsewhere.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">We should also address the specialization of each institution. If there is a strongly-supported American Jewish history museum, does there need to be a Russian-American Jewish history museum, a European-American Jewish history museum, a Spanish-American Jewish history museum or can we cover them all under one set of four walls?...</span></p>
<p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline ! important; float: none;" class="Apple-style-span">...</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">Why not a Jewish Arts Center in a synagogue complex built to include a Holocaust Remembrance wing? By putting these entities all into one building, we are preserving precious resources and reflecting on cooperation and other efficiencies.</span></p>
</blockquote>
<p><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline ! important; float: none;" class="Apple-style-span">I can just imagine the meeting between all those &quot;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">stakeholders, constituents and leaders.&quot;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline ! important; float: none;" class="Apple-style-span"> Somebody starts the meeting off noting that a lot of the institutions represented in the room, in the words of Evans and Lapin, &quot;</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">would be more suitable as smaller components of larger facilities.&quot; &quot;Sure,&quot; another leader will respond, &quot;some of us need to be subsumed. Fine. You go first.&quot;</span> The egos of leaders can be annoying, but the egos of leaders do not constitute an entirely harmful force. When leaders feel like big shots of organizations, they're more invested. Spreading around the ego-boost is a very real way to spread around engagement.</p>
<p>But this isn't really about leaders' egos. Another quibble: the authors seem to assume the existence of a certain, stable-sized pot of funding which can either be divided among many institutions or given to fewer of them in larger portions. This is a false assumption. Perhaps there are certain donors who will donate generously to a Russian-American Jewish history museum, but who will not give anything at all for an American Jewish history museum. In such a case, the separate museum is not necessarily as inefficient as one might assume. How much of the redundancy really represents money that could be consolidated, and how much represents money that will be spent either redundantly or not at all? It would seem quite difficult to say.</p>
<p>Let me not belabor this point, however. I fully concede that inefficiency is rampant in American Jewish communal life. The real p<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial,Tahoma,Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline ! important; float: none;" class="Apple-style-span">roblem is that human life is not all about efficiency. The most efficient meal would be a perfectly calibrated nutritional concoction delivered intravenously, but I think most of us would rather have a nice meal.</span> Consider: how many of the best days of your life could be best described by the word &quot;efficient&quot;? I don't mean to say that efficiency counts for nothing -- just that it only counts as much as it counts, because other things count too.</p>
<p>Some of those things that count are the vast diversity of views and ideologies in American Jewish life -- differences that sometimes require institutions with divergent missions, values, and operational guidelines. To the authors' rhetorical question, &quot;<span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">Why not a Jewish Arts Center in a synagogue complex built to include a Holocaust Remembrance wing?&quot; I answer: what kind of synagogue complex? Whose shul gets the community's art, and what does that say to the people who daven across the street?</span></p>
<p>The countless throngs of Jewish organizations that have sprung up from <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5485">generations ago</a> to <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=3532">the present</a> tell the story of a people unlikely to fall suddenly into lockstep with one another, and I'm not ready to say that's a bad thing. <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); display: inline !important; float: none; " class="Apple-style-span">Evans and Lapin make a point worth considering, and I'm sure there are many cases in which they're right. But in a world of declining civic engagement, do we really want to say that fewer of us should be starting organizations? Maybe we do. Maybe we need more joiners, more humble servants, and fewer egotistical leaders. But I do hope we conduct the conversation rightly started by Evans and Lapin on grounds far broader than efficiency alone.<br />
</span></p>
organizational developmentfundraising/philanthropyjewish communal servicenonprofitsdiscoursediversitycommunity buildingThu, 03 Nov 2011 13:10:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/11/3/Ill-Put-Down-My-Institution-if-You-Put-Down-YoursDavid Elcott on Interfaith and Interethnic Coalition-Buildinghttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/10/11/Office-Hours-David-Elcott-on-Interfaith-and-Interethnic-CoalitionBuilding
<p>For the latest installment in our <a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/Office-Hours">Office Hours series</a>, Prof. <a href="http://wagner.nyu.edu/Elcott">David Elcott</a> discusses his experiences working with leaders across boundaries of religion and ethnicity to build meaningful interfaith and interethnic coalitions.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C4NQNZTDp8Y" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
jewish-christian relationsOffice HoursBlack-Jewish relationsdiscoursediversityoutreachcommunity relationsclergyisraelracepluralismpeaceIsraeli-Palestinian conflictvideoreligiondialogueJewish-Islamic relationsTue, 11 Oct 2011 08:00:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/10/11/Office-Hours-David-Elcott-on-Interfaith-and-Interethnic-CoalitionBuildingFrom the J-Vault: Sharing the World with "the Mongolian, the Negro and the Hindoo"http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/23/From-the-JVault-Sharing-the-World-with-the-Mongolian-the-Negro-and-the-Hindoo
<p><img border="0" align="middle" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/jvault_web_logo.JPG" alt="J-Vault logo" /></p>
<p>On May 15, 1923, Dr. Alexander A. Goldenweiser a (presumably Jewish) professor of sociology and anthropology, gave a lengthy&nbsp; lecture on race and culture to the National Conference of Jewish Social Service, and took questions from the audience. The speech, and the Q&amp;A session, were transcribed and presented in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service. In addition to discussing race generally, he discusses the racial identity of Jews in particular.</p>
<p><strong>This week, from the J-Vault: <a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=12757"><em>Race and Culture in the Modern World</em></a> </strong>(1923)</p>
<p>&quot;Race,&quot; says Goldenweiser, &quot;is a state of mind. It is an attitude. We are replete with it... [T]he problem of race and culture refers to all of us.&quot; The professor strikes a tone that must have been progressive at the time. But his treatment of racial origins and development are bound to strike 2011 ears with significant dissonance. Goldenweiser criticizes biased tests which found African-Americans (&quot;Negroes&quot;) to be less intelligent than whites. These tests &quot;measure many things, but they do not in any real sense measure intelligence,&quot; he notes. Yet he does not object to the principle of testing for inherent racial difference -- only the execution of this idea:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not say that there are no psychological differences between the races (and please understand me with reference to this point), I do not say that the races are all psychologically identical. I think, in fact, that it would be very strange if this proved to be the case. We s aw that from the physical standpoint the races have become greatly differentiated after their dispersion over the surface of the globe, and that these differentiations were deep-rooted. To assume that no psychological changes accompanied these physical changes would be, to say the least, unreasonable. I think, therefore, that we are on the safe side when we assume that when we shall know more about racial psychology, when we shall have improved the methods of investigating brains, we shall find that in psychological dispositions of one sort or another&mdash;this is as closely as we can put it today&mdash;there are differences between the separate racial groups. But this belongs to the future. The particular racial differences in psychological disposition often assumed today, on the other hand, usually prove to be illusions, upon critical examination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prejudice isn't wrong in principle, he implies. Rather, we simply don't have advanced enough knowledge to be accurate in our prejudice. Meanwhile, &quot;We might as well be prepared to share the world in the future with the Mongolian, the Negro and the Hindoo.&quot;</p>
<p>From the Q&amp;A, an answer on the nature of being Jewish:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[T]he Jew is a race but there isn't much in race, meaning by this that the Jew is no more of a pure race than other races, and that in relation to the other races&mdash;we speak, of course, here of sub-racial types in Europe&mdash;the Jew is more conspicuously mixed...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a great deal more in this document. Read the entire piece for an amazing glimpse into the history of American (and Jewish) thinking about race.</p>
<p><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/downloadPublication.cfm?PublicationID=12757"><strong>Download this publication.</strong></a></p>
<p><img border="0" align="middle" alt="J-Vault logo" style="width: 123px; height: 108px;" src="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/images/lock.JPG" /></p>
J-VaultracismdiscoursehistorydiversityracecultureTue, 23 Aug 2011 11:52:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/23/From-the-JVault-Sharing-the-World-with-the-Mongolian-the-Negro-and-the-HindooCrown Heights Riot Anniversaryhttp://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/18/Crown-Heights-Riot-Anniversary
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Friday, August 19, is the twentieth anniversary of the Crown Heights Riots. A number of interesting articles have already appeared marking the milestone, and I imagine more are forthcoming. See especially <a href="http://forward.com/articles/141518/">this by Jane Eisner</a> and <a href="http://forward.com/articles/141519/">this by Josh Nathan-Kazis</a>, but if you read only one article on this anniversary, read <a href="http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/telling_it_it_wasnt">Ari L. Goldman's &quot;Telling It Like It Wasn't&quot;</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My job was to file memos to the main &ldquo;rewrite&rdquo; reporters back in the Times office in Manhattan about what I saw and heard... Yet, when I picked up the paper, the article I read was not the story I had reported. I saw headlines that described the riots in terms solely of race. &ldquo;Two Deaths Ignite Racial Clash in Tense Brooklyn Neighborhood,&rdquo; the Times headline said. And, worse, I read an opening paragraph, what journalists call a &ldquo;lead,&rdquo; that was simply untrue: &ldquo;Hasidim and blacks clashed in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn through the day and into the night yesterday.&rdquo;</p>
In all my reporting during the riots I never saw &mdash; or heard of &mdash; any violence by Jews against blacks. But the Times was dedicated to this version of events: blacks and Jews clashing amid racial tensions...</blockquote><blockquote>... On Aug. 21, as I stood in a group of chasidic men in front of the Lubavitch headquarters, a group of demonstrators were coming down Eastern Parkway. &ldquo;Heil Hitler,&rdquo; they chanted. &ldquo;Death to the Jews.&rdquo;..</blockquote><blockquote>...Suddenly rocks and bottles started to fly toward us and a chasidic man just a few feet away from me was hit in the throat and fell to the ground. Some ran to help the injured man but most of us ran for cover. I ran for a payphone and, my hands shaking with rage, dialed my editor. I spoke in a way that I never had before or since when talking to a boss.
<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what&rsquo;s happening here!&rdquo; I yelled. &ldquo;I am on the streets getting attacked. Someone next to me just got hit. I am writing memos and what comes out in the paper? &lsquo;Hasidim and blacks clashed&rsquo;? That&rsquo;s not what is happening here. Jews are being attacked! You&rsquo;ve got this story all wrong. All wrong.&rdquo;</p>
<p>I didn&rsquo;t blame the &ldquo;rewrite&rdquo; reporter. I blamed the editors. It was clear that they had settled on a &ldquo;frame&rdquo; for the story. The way they saw it, there were two narratives here: the white narrative and the black narrative. And both had equal weight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the anniversary of this low point in the African-American and Jewish relationship, here are some selected publications from our <a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?Topic=Black-Jewish-Relations&amp;TopicID=211&amp;SortBy=PublicationYear&amp;SortDir=DESC&amp;MaxRows=100">Black-Jewish Relations</a> topic:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=5031">Negroes and Jews</a> (1966)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=4191">Why Can't They Be Like Us?</a> (1969)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=4301">The Interracial Crisis: How Should Jews Respond?</a> (1969)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2937">Selective Black Hostility Toward Jewish and Non-Jewish Whites</a> (1978)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=9843">Keeping a Black-Jewish Sense of Balance</a> (1979)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2808">Blacks and Jews: The Strained Alliance</a> (1981)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=660">Behind the Black-Jewish Split</a> (1986)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=3820">Face to Face: Black-Jewish Dialogues on Campus</a> (1987)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=11048">Sh'ma December 1995: Jews and Blacks</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=3383">Black and Jewish Members of Congress: A House Undivided</a> (1995)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=7652">Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism</a> (2000)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=2181">Blacks and Jews in America: History, Myths, and Realities</a> (2006)</li>
<li><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=3793">African American-Jewish Relations: an AJC History</a> (2007)</li>
</ul>
community relationsBlack-Jewish relationsdiscoursehistorydiversitydialogueantisemitismThu, 18 Aug 2011 13:10:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/18/Crown-Heights-Riot-AnniversaryGov. Christie: Shari'a Concerns Are "Crazy"http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/4/Gov-Christie-Sharia-Conerns-Are-Crazy
<p>The video below demonstrates that not every popular Republican has jumped on the anti-Islam bandwagon. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, best known for his (to put it mildly) bluntness, reacts to criticism of his appointment of a Muslim judge to the state bench:<iframe width="640" height="390" frameborder="0" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/y83z552NJaw" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p>We've had something of an anti-anti-Islam theme going on this Jewish policy blog for the past few weeks, but I think that's appropriate. It's not only that Muslims and Jews share key values, <a href="http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/02/3088821/poll-finds-american-jews-and-muslims-share-common-values">as the JTA reported this week.</a> It's also, naturally, that American Jews have a strong communal knowledge of what it's like to be a vilified religious/ethnic minority. The fact that our two communities are so bitterly divided over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and related issues makes it all the more important to recognize these and other points of commonality.</p>
<p>Background:</p>
<p><a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?Topic=Islam&amp;TopicID=241&amp;SortBy=PublicationYear&amp;SortDir=DESC">BJPA Publications on Islam</a><br />
<a href="http://bjpa.org/Publications/results.cfm?Topic=Jewish-Muslim-Relations&amp;TopicID=591&amp;SortBy=PublicationYear&amp;SortDir=DESC">BJPA Publications on Jewish-Muslim relations</a><br />
<a href="http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs070/1102433540041/archive/1103656113413.html">BJPA newsletter on Jewish-Muslim relations, September 2010</a></p>
<p>Other recent Islam themed blog posts:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/18/Herman-Cain-Would-Ban-Mosques-Why-Not-Synagogues">July 18</a><br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/7/28/Cains-Incomplete-Apology-and-Religion-in-Politics">July 28</a><br />
<a href="http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/1/Publications-for-Ramadan">August 1</a></p>
democracypoliticsdiscoursediversitylawislamcommunity relationsleadershipreligionreligion and statedialogueJewish-Islamic relationsgovernmentThu, 04 Aug 2011 12:38:00 -0500http://www.bjpa.org/blog/index.cfm/2011/8/4/Gov-Christie-Sharia-Conerns-Are-Crazy